The Japanese Ink and Wash Painting: A Painting Made with One Single Brushstroke

Holding my brush upright above the paper, I breathe deeply. A long, tense moment passes before I lunge down and drag the ink straight across the page, painting a line that slashes through much of the picture.

I have just painted a man's shoulder.

One may be surprised to hear of such brutal expression from a region known for its people's emotional restraint and do-or-die technical strictness in its numerous martial and creative arts. In the view of the nanga school of Japan, however, an ink and wash painting (or sumi-e) is a highly symbolic expression in which the artist's personality is often on show as much as the subject itself.

Americans and Europeans are all too familiar, however viscerally, with the "traditional" schools of painting established in their countries concurrent with the rise of the Japanese nanga school in the 1600's. The rule was and largely is to elevate the artist who can paint the most photorealistic picture to the status of genius, a "master" of his art. While the ability to paint a subject to the minutest detail is a remarkable one, the men and women of the nanga school might suggest that the indistinctness of the individual brush strokes understates their importance as a measure not of the work produced, but of the artist behind it.